after effects 5.0, August 22, 2002

for the first 3 chapters i agree with that one review, "they should have called the book, freaking out in a book!" after the 3rd chapter things started becoming more clear. at first it seems that all your doing is clicking, right clicking and you don't really understand why your doing it? your basicly doing so just because the book said so. i wanted to learn after effects to enhance my DV work. wanted to create motion graphics in my videos.

if your absolutely new to after effects i would recomend this book to get you started. at the end of the book i was very comforatable in moving around in the program. i knew where everything was and what they did. i truly beleive those who really want to learn this complex program, "WILL" learn it. again, the beginning was frustrating BUT after about the 3rd chapter i started enjoying it. biggest thing is just to stick with it. read it, if you dont understand something, read it again until it sticks.

after your done this book and can move around fairly well in the program. i would THEN recomend trish and chris meyer's after effects book (creating motion graphics). after completing BOTH books you will be well on your way.

i ONLY rated this book 3 stars because the purpose of the book is to teach new comers how to use the software. at some points i found the book wondering off in to complex projects. EX: using motion cameras etc........ most beginners do NOT use motion cameras. you have to learn to crawl before you can walk!

all in all the book is an EXCELLENT way to get started. i do, however, feel that after completing the book a person must continue with their studies to fully understand after effects. there is just so much to know and do, classroom in a book does NOT cover everything.

hope the review helps someone!

More of an Intro than a "Best of", August 16, 2002

There are some gems here. Orson Scott Card's classic "Ender's Game" definitely deserves to be a volume with this title. I highly recommend the novel-length expansion of the story and it's sequels (most notably the companion novel, "Ender's Shadow" and "Shadow of the Hegemon"). David Drake's "Hangman" is an excellent introduction to his Hammer's Slammers series which also requires inclusion in a volume such as this. Walter Jon Williams's "Wolf Time" is one of the best stories in the volume, taking place in the same universe as "Voice of the Whirlwind". And Joe Haldeman expanded "Hero" to become "Forever War" (and its sequels).

Anne McCaffrey's "Dragonrider" was, likewise, the beginning of a large franchise, but it's inclusion as an example of military SF is quite a stretch. Similarly, Harry Turtledove's "The Last Article" is an excellent story, but it would have fit much better in his "best alternate history" collection than in this volume.

Other classics include Poul Anderson's "Among Thieves" (an intro to his Polesotechnic League universe), Philip K. Dick's "Second Variety" (recently made, like so many of his stories, into a movie), and C. J. Cherryh's "The Scapegoat". I also enjoyed George R. R. Martin's "Night of the Vampyres".

Gregory Benford's "To the Storming Gulf" is not military at all; it would, instead, fit quite nicely in a collection of post-apocalyptic fiction.

While touted by some as a classic, I have never been impressed with Cordwainer Smith's "The Game of Rat and Dragon". And Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority" is merely clever. Any number of other stories could have replaced either of these tales in a "best of" volume.

The Stories Don't Fit the Title, August 16, 2002

Certainly, "Bring the Jubilee" and "Moon of Ice" belong in this collection, being pioneering works in the genre (though long-time readers of SF - like me - will have come across them before). The dated writing style of "Jubilee" (written in 1952) actually adds an air of authenticity to it. One might, however, argue it's not a short story, but a novella - it takes up nearly a quarter of the book.

"The Lucky Strike" by Kim Stanley Robinson, and "Islands in the Sea" are solid entries. "Islands", by Turtledove himself, is possibly the best AH story in the book. "Suppose They Gave a Peace" is refreshingly subtle. "The Undiscovered" is also an interesting little tale that fits well in a collection such as this. And Poul Anderson's "Eutopia" explores an alternate America from the viewpoint of an inter-dimensional traveler in a similar vein to his Time Patrol books.

The remaining stories, however, roam farther afield.

Greg Bear's "Through Road No Whither" is a great mystical story that contains characters from an alternate history, but is not really an AH tale itself. "Manassas, Again" contains AH references, but they aren't integral to the story. And "The Winterberry", while excellent, might better be classified as a part of the "conspiracy theorist" genre.

Three stories, "Dance Band on the Titanic", "Mozart in Mirrorshades" and Larry Niven's "All the Myriad Ways" (the best of the three), are about inter-dimensional travel rather than the histories of those alternate dimensions.

And Allen Steele's "The Death of Captain Future" concerns neither alternate history nor timelines, but is a mainstream SF story. I enjoyed the story a great deal, but that doesn't change the fact that it doesn't BELONG in a collection of this kind.

I eagerly await a "best of" collection that is more on topic.

Neither Blasphemy Nor Shakespeare - just funny, August 15, 2002

I first read "Bored of the Rings" more than 20 years ago (in high school) and I thought it was hilarious, one long belly laugh after another. At the time, I could quite easily have given it 5 stars. And one of the reasons it deserved such high marks is because it was clear that the authors loved the work they were skewering as much as I did!

Now, however, it's got a lot to overcome. "Bored" was written some 30 years ago by a couple of guys who would go on to start National Lampoon. If you find the "National Lampoon" movies to be way too sophomoric or insufficiently subtle - well, this book is NOT subtle - this may not be your cup of grog. And if your experience of LOTR consists of seeing the movie rather than reading the books, you'll miss a lot. It's also dated, sometimes badly so. The political references will be completely lost on anyone under 25 and will seem remote to many who are older than that.

But, here's the thing, despite all that IT'S STILL FUNNY! My 10 year old insisted on reading it because boring old dad kept chuckling over the misadventures of the boggies (who eerily resemble certain in-laws).

I'd love to see the National Lampoon guys do an update on this. Perhaps they could call it "Bored of the Rings: The Rerun of the Thing".

"This is not for you." ... but, then, maybe it is, August 15, 2002

If you can get past it's flaws, you will find that Danielewski has spun an interesting (and genuinely eerie) yarn (or two, or three). There are sparks of real genius in the book that can transcend the pretensions, and the unusual - though not unique, check out David Foster Wallace - style is an asset when it is not taken too far.

The Good: The Navidson's and their friends are believable and given a reasonable amount of depth given the format (an analysis of a video record). Their plight is genuinely suspenseful moving from simply disconcerting to parts that are truly scary. It's relatively easy to empathize with these people. This is definitely a story worth reading! Johnny Truant's plight is also easy to empathize with, particularly for readers who can get truly engrossed in a book. The book format can be a great asset - as a means of bringing the various stories together into a whole, it generally works. It requires the reader to abandon traditional "beginning-middle-end" thinking in order to get the most out of it and that, in and of itself, can be a joy. Even the use of a colored font wherever the word "house" appears is a nice touch.

The Bad: Johnny Truant isn't nearly as plausible as the Navidsons. His life is more of a post-adolescent fantasy than anything that happens in the real world - even in L.A. The insights provided into Zampano are infrequent and occasionally inconsistent - one wonders why any attempt was made at all. And the frequent use of footnotes, while sometimes an asset, hopelessly break up the emotional rhythm of the story when the tension should be highest.

The Ugly: It's possible to get WAY too much of a good thing. Chapter 9 - with it's over-the-top barrage of intercut, sideways, backward, inverted and overstruck text; it's (admittedly!) meaningless lists; and footnotes that fall off into oblivion - is a disaster. Perhaps it is meant to give the reader a taste of the same disorientation experienced by the characters, but it becomes simply tedious. Later, pages and pages of emptiness interrupted by a word or two, often at odd angles and formats, certainly make the pages fly by, but this quickly get old. Sadly, none of these excesses add anything to the story. A gradual increase in the size of the margins - slightly shrinking the text - would have been more subtle and might actually have increased the feeling of claustrophobia. [BEWARE: THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH IS A SPOILER.] And Johnny Truant's descent into madness and destitution ends with ... nothing. He miraculously (and without explanation) becomes available to the "Editor" as if he's just another normal guy buying groceries, paying the bills, etc.

One final note: take the time to go online and look up the Pulitzer-winning photograph mentioned in the book. Seeing this chilling image adds significantly to the impact of the book. And then look up the tragic story of the real-life photographer who took it. The real world has always had more horror in it than can ever be found in fiction.

"The Population Bomb" Revisited, August 13, 2002

Ehrlich (this time accompanied by his wife, Anne, and Gretchen Daily) admits that his earlier predictions were off the mark and even makes an attempt to address where those earlier predictions went wrong ... and then promptly repeats the same mistakes.

The anecdotes that show the suffering in sub-Saharan Africa are chilling. Such images cannot touch a feeling heart without making a lasting impression. The reasons for the suffering that the author recounts are right there within the body of the work - political upheval, maldistribution, misuse of agricultural capacity and oppressive poverty linked to all three. These problems, however, are treated as secondary to the tried and true "Population Bomb" nonsense.

As in his earlier work, Ehrlich still hasn't grasped the difference between finite resources and FIXED supply and demand. This is both poor science and poor history. The problem is not (even in the smaller framework of sub-Saharan Africa rather than worldwide) that sufficient food cannot be produced to accommodate population growth. It is those very problems that have been dismissed as secondary that prevent enough food from being produced and/or being made available to the people.

He also fails to note what has happened throughout the rest of the world. As these problems have been overcome by human societies across the globe, human misery has been lessened and birthrates (the supposed problem) have declined without intervention from any external source - which is clearly what is being advocated here.

The trends that Ehrlich discusses are not even accurate. Sub-saharan Africa lags behind the rest of the world in almost every category (per capita caloric intake, income, access to clean water and sewage), but that is because these things are improving at a slower pace than elsewhere, NOT because things are getting worse. And this is despite the political unrest that still rears its head across the continent.

The worst thing about this tome is that it risks concentrating efforts on Ehrlich's pet project rather than the real problems in the region.

It can't survive hindsight, August 13, 2002

He spends the next 180 pages proving conclusively that such is not the case.

It isn't simply that his predictions turned out to be wrong in some of the particulars, but rather that they were so completely wrong that they will NEVER come to pass (though he unrepentantly continues to beat the same drum).

Ehrlich predicted that, by the end of the 20th century, human want would outstrip available resources; whole areas of human endeavor would screech to a halt due to resource scarcity; England would, in all likelihood, cease to exist; India would collapse due to its inability to feed itself; and "inevitable" mass starvation would sweep the globe (including the US). We were on the brink of disaster in 1968, and the future looked very, very dark. In fact, he asserts, "it is now too late to take action to save many of those people."

And yet none of these things have come to pass. Why? Because Ehrlich makes the same mistake that Malthus did: he confuses the concept of finite resources with the notion that they (and the demand for them) are fixed. This is the point that Ehrlich's detractors (most notably Julian Simon) have been making for decades.

Ehrlich did not foresee the technological innovations (the Green Revolution) that have been such a boon to mankind, or changes in both the supply and demand of various resources (such as those in his famous bet with Simon). But such changes were inevitable (far more than the catastrophe that he predicted). The entire history of human endeavor is adaptive. As resources become more scarce, their costs rise. As those costs rise, incentives are created to find alternatives or increase supply or decrease demand. Thus, assuming that either resource availability and/or per capita demand is fixed is not merely an oversight - it is inexcusably poor science.

This is also why claims that "The Population Bomb" was some sort of self-correcting prophecy - that by drawing attention to the problem, disaster was averted - hold no water. This fallacy is based on the assumption that long-term concerns about population growth are somehow more pressing than current hunger problems. Norman Borlaug (one of many involved in the Green Revolution) would have a good laugh about that one. Unfortunately, the major cause of hunger in the world today (in countries like Ethiopia) is not resource scarcity, but political realities (despots) that prevent access to food.

One last point to Ehrlich's defenders: much has been made about cancer rates (and Simon's purported unwillingness to bet on them). But a rise in cancer incidence was to be expected, not because of pollutants or chemicals or environmental degradations, but because cancer is primarily a disease of the aged. The population "explosion" did not occur because more children were/are being born (the opposite is true), but that children were/are no longer "dropping like flies." The average age of the population has risen markedly and so, of course, has the incidence of age related diseases.

My favorite example of Ehrlich-speak: "Enough of fantasy.... Just remember that, at the current growth rate, in a few thousand years everything in the visible universe would be converted into people, and the ball of people would be expanding at the speed of light."

I'm SO glad he'd had "enough of fantasy."